Hello Squad,
[Every single post has been excellent, what a way to exercise the mind, I am exhausted and hope I can
keep up with you all.]
I will like to center my post in John B. and Keith comments:
John B:
> " As to whether Pirsig unites the philosophic schools, I don't know. I think
> he is correct in making value-laden experience basic, but as I've said above there seem to be
> other sources of dynamic quality that don't seem to me to fit comfortably within here and now
> experience. I wish it was simpler but to me it isn't."
>
> Keith:
"..........But if everything were in flux,always changing in every way all the time, then there would
be no pattern
to perceive. Forget that, there would be nothing stable to perceive a
pattern ... no perceiver, much less percipient. Heraclitus is washed away
in his ever-changing river."
Keith post kept me wondering a while, but something that got my attention was "Heraclitus is washed
away in his ever-changing river.", the reason is because I had read somewhere about Heraclitus's
philosophy and Taoism.
"This Greek (Heraclitus of Ephesus)... He shared with Lao Tzu not only the emphasis on continuos
change, which he expressed in his famous saying "Everything flows," but also the notion that all
changes are cyclic. He compared the world order to "an ever-living fire, kindling in measures and
going out in measures,' an image which is indeed very similar to the Chinese idea of the Tao
manifesting itself in the cyclic interplay of ying and yang."
When I first read ZMM, back in 1980, I was in the middle of an "intellectual storm". We read the book
in a class and along with others, I remember we also read The Tao Of Physics. Those two books sent me
spinning out, I was in a frantic search. ZMM was excellent, but it didn't quite get me out of the
Storm, but it put me on the right path. I went back on my own to learn everything I could about the
Greeks, also Chinese Philosophy in particular Taoism and Confucius's philosophy. (I'll tell you where
I am getting in a minute).
John B. pointed out once again about "As to whether Pirsig unites the philosophic schools, I don't
know". The answer John B., is a big YES. Mr. Pirsig's writings put all of those schools in one big
cooking pot.
Here is how I see it. The problem with Taoism is that it is pure Dynamic Quality, it rejects static
Quality (That's the reason such philosophy is incomplete). Pirsig tell us, 'Get a grip of society'
look at their codes, dust them off, use that as a base and built from there. Western Philosophy is
pure static Quality (It rejects feelings, intuition, emotions, objectivity is the aim). What I
understand from Mr. Pisigs writings is that 'the Union' of both is the best system. John B., also
mention something about he finds Pirsig's ideas to be in contradiction, (sorry, I am in a bit of a
hurry, and can't fond your exact quote); to that I will say that is not contradiction, he is just
saying 'We can do both', how? and when?. I agree with John here on the part where he mentions that
you can't do both "at the same time". .........BUT, wouldn't you all agree that we can do it in
CYCLES!. Rationality and Intuition dancing the perfect TANGO!.
Pirsig's Philosophy tell me :
"Learn from the past, live in the present, stop from time to time and smell the roses".
(I must go now, or my Kids will start WW III inside this Flat.)
Ciao Bello(a)s,
Carmen.
>
>
> MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org
MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Jan 17 2002 - 13:08:43 GMT